Mission #1: A Story Written in Sand

In my efforts to clean up and recycle this vast amount of waste, I aspire to bring attention to the enormous problem of plastic pollution and inspire change to the type of habits that create it in the first place.

Plastic constitutes 90% of all trash floating in the world's oceans with some areas having a ratio of 6-to-1 plastic to plankton by weight in 1999 and 46-to-1 plastic to plankton ratio in 2008. The world produces 300 billion pounds of plastic each year - 10% of this plastic ends up in the oceans where 70% eventually sinks damaging habitats on the ocean floor, resembling food to marine life and eventually making its way back onto our dinner plates.

Ending plastic pollution is about avoiding plastic in the first place and if unable to, reusing or recycling the material as opposed to tossing it into the garbage towards the landfill or onto the ground embarking it upon a journey to the sea.

As the economy drags on, people everywhere are re-embracing frugality. They hold onto their cars and materials a little longer, are buying less stuff, seeking used products and learning how to save money while satisfying their needs. But despite our best efforts, what's missing from the resourcefulness are products designed to last and not simply tossed away - almost instantaneously after one use.

In my four missions, I seek to inspire a world where no one person is too small to make a difference and where every single person matters; to empower people with over a million reasons to join hands and feel unafraid in embarking on our collective, generational mission to stand up for a cause, whether it's ecological or not, and to draw attention to Everything Connects where a vast ecologically rooted, universally important base of knowledge awaits with near-endless possibilities towards a safer, healthier and sustainable future.

“What we are doing in the ocean with the breakdown of plastics into microscopic nanoparticles is carrying on an uncontrolled experiment in toxic drug delivery to every organism in the ocean with zero monitoring and zero controls.” ~Captain Charles Moore